Anarchists & AntiFascists protected clergy and students

In this Democracy Now interview, Cornel West and Rev. Traci Blackmon say that they and 20 University of Virginia students owed their lives to AntiFascists and Anarchists who protected them from thousands of white supremacists. Police stood aside to let neo-Nazi protestors attack the antiprotestors.

screen grab from the video

Cornel West:

The next day, for example, those 20 of us who were standing, many of them clergy, we would have been crushed like cockroaches if it were not for the anarchists and the antifascists who approached, over 300, 350 antifascists. We just had 20. And we’re singing "This Little light of Mine,"…

The antifascists, and then, crucial, the anarchists, because they saved our lives, actually. We would have been completely crushed, and I’ll never forget that. [emphasis mine]

Has been a week since your post, Ruth, I take it current events at Berkely have proven me correct since then. Antifa had, my point is, one shining moment, when they came up against actual fascists. Otherwise, for Pete's sake, be honest and call a bully a bully.

In 1968, on the Mall in Washington, D.C. I was part of a peaceful march during the Civil Rights conflicts. We had no guns, sticks, or weapons of any kind. We marched under the instruction of Martin Luther King, Jr. soon after his assassination. Police officers mounted on horses struggled to keep the anti Civil Rights group, who were armed, separate from those of us who marched in support of Human Rights. In the confusion and anxiety, a mounted police officer hit me over my head with a billy club. It was a radicalizing moment for me. I knew I was involved in a real struggle that had risks.

MLK, Jr. was successful in joining the Civil Rights Movement with the Peace Movement, and labor unions, and the Women's Equal Rights Movement. This coalition had a power that grew as the evidence of injustices increased. Consciousness raising was part of the process.

There is an iconic photo of a civil rights worker in Seattle who was unarmed and hit by a blast of tear gas.

84-year-old activist Dorli Rainey after being hit by police mace.jpeg

The conclusions I drew from these experiences convinced me that the most powerful weapon is non-violence. It all boils down to become the person I want to be. I am the one defining who I am and how I act. If laws don't protect me, I can work to get laws passed that do. If law enforcement does not protect me, I have a right to seek protection and if I fail I have the responsibility to see that police services provide me with legal protection. If the judges make decisions against me, I have the right to appeal.

Unfortunately peaceful protestors are often met with such police violence. Similar things occurred at the Dakota pipeline protests. Essentially the police are representing the companies installing the pipelines and running the fuel through it.

"The Battle of Blair Mountain is now cited as a pivotal chapter in American labor history, but in the short term, it proved to be a crushing defeat for the miners. The state of West Virginia charged Keeney, Mooney and some 20 other union men with treason, and hundreds of others were indicted for murder. Nearly all were later acquitted, but the legal battles emptied the UMWA’s coffers and hindered its organizing efforts. By the end of the decade, only a few hundred miners in West Virginia were still members. The union wouldn’t reclaim the coalfields until the mid-1930s and the Great Depression, when workers’ rights to organize were enshrined in New Deal legislation such as the National Industrial Recovery Act."

" I don't support anarchy, or violence other than in self defense. I view Antifa's resort to violence as self-defense in this situation, not provocation."

Wow - you really dont know much about antifa. I don't support Nazis, other than their right to speech and march, but antifa showed up there to provoke them and throw rocks at them. That is hardly self defense.